Staying in our comfort zone is always frowned upon when it comes to being successful in life. Although, there might be a different way to look at it that being in your comfort zone may help achieve your goals.

A different take

I saw this book on the Blinkist app entitled The Comfort Zone. It was written by Kristen Butler. She is the CEO and founder of Power of Positivity whose aim is to provide life lessons that help people live their best life.

What caught my attention to reading the blink is what it mentioned in the introduction:

“…bust the age-old myth that growth only happens outside the comfort zone…”

Something different, right?

We have all been hearing that the only way to grow and be successful is to get out of our comfort zone and experience the unknown. And the benefits of leaving your comfort zone outweigh the cost if you stay inside. There are various theories, books, TED talks, and other activities and examples that are related to this.

With all the benefits of being outside your comfort zone, staying inside it is something that may bring us disadvantages, and worse, lose opportunities to grow and achieve what we want.

That is why this blink (I am yet to purchase the book) is very interesting. What could staying in our comfort zone bring us that could help us be successful? Why would keeping within the zone be beneficial for our growth and well-being? And, lastly, how could going beyond it hurt us?

Before we go any further, let us define the meaning of comfort zone.

What is comfort zone?

Wikipedia defines comfort zone as “…a familiar psychological state where people are at ease and (perceive they are) in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.” In simple words, it is a state of mind where you perceive at ease with your situation and environment.

To better illustrate, here are general examples of a comfort zone that most of us experience;

• Staying at home or at your work where you feel safe, at ease, and without any stress.
• Avoiding arguments that challenge your belief, therefore, staying with people who share the same opinion.
• A regular routine that minimizes your risks like taking the same route to work
• Doing the same work that you know how and not open to doing anything else.

These are just general examples. However, comfort zone is different for everyone. Some may be comfortable listening to a speaker while some are comfortable delivering the speech. Some may be comfortable expressing their thoughts through writing and some may be comfortable with getting into a ring and having a fight with someone. There are also some who rather work behind the scenes and there are some who are more at ease facing clients and delivering sales or progress presentations.

It is different for everyone. What could be too easy for some may be too difficult for others causing them anxiety and stress which is outside their comfort zone.

This is why staying in the comfort zone impedes growth and in effect, reduces the chance of success in life.

Going out of your comfort zone means trying something new. It is about doing something else that you have not done before. It is about pushing yourself, making an effort, and experiencing the unknown to you. In the process, you learn a thing or two. These learnings become your knowledge that you could use in the future. As a result, you have expanded your comfort zone and may be ready to tackle new things. Growth comes. Success comes.

So, if that is the case, it is good to leave what is known to you as it makes you a better person. However, staying with what you know, where you are comfortable, can also lead you to a happy and successful life.

Knowing this may turn your life around.

When it is not for you

I started my career as a customer service representative in one of the biggest BPO companies here in the Philippines. After a year, I was accepted to become a workforce analyst. For those who do not know what a workforce analyst does, our main function is to ensure that the right people are providing service to the customers at the right time. That is the very just of it but it has a lot of math behind it.

For 20 years, I have been doing this line of work and have been promoted many times up to director level. I enjoy what I do especially translating everything into numbers and seeing projections happen as a big part of what I do is to assume what could happen in the future and plan around it. Everything was well and good until I got promoted to director level. This is when everything fell apart.

The scope took me away from the groundwork. It created a big space between me and our rank and file. There was a time when people started calling me “sir” and started giving me special treatments. No one was willing to talk to me about what was really happening. And from what I gathered, most would take my simple sentence as a command instead of them arguing about it and giving me their input.

I became very uncomfortable.

I also started learning financials. My task was to manage the revenue. It is to ensure that what we aim for as target revenue for the quarter is met. It became all about money. All about monetary value. All about getting more from the current workforce.

This added to my anxiety and stress.

While learning these new things was great, it also was something I was not at ease to do. I lost the connection I had with people solving their problems. I lost the science and art I used to apply at work and it all became about increasing the company’s value. Additionally, the work required long hours which I never liked.

This is when I stopped and turned back to where I was comfortable.

Not all growth is an advantage

This is why I am interested in reading Kristen Butler’s book. I have first-hand experience of staying in what I know, where am I comfortable, a place where I feel at ease can also help me be successful in life. All of these are avoiding unnecessary anxiety, stress, and unwanted feelings and emotions.

In my new work right now, I am still learning a lot. I am pushed to do more than what is expected of me. However, I am comfortable with the demands of work, the stress that seems absent, and the work culture we have.

Staying in our comfort zone can still make us grow. I think it is just exerting a little effort to slowly expand it that could contribute to our well-being and help us be successful. Putting too much strain on ourselves which is brought by the fast-paced world could backfire and hurt us in the long run.

Do what you are comfortable to do. Do not get pulled by others who compete just to get ahead. Focus on what you want to do. In the end, they will not matter and only what you consider important is of value.